- B.S. Civil Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin (2011)
- M.S. Environmental Engineering from University of Massachusetts Amherst (2014)
- Ph.D from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2017)
Dr. Cynthia Castro is a process engineer at Wade Trim working on wastewater process design projects for municipal clients.
She was previously a postdoctoral scholar at the University of South Florida in the Civil & Environmental Engineering department. At USF, she worked in Dr. Daniel Yeh’s Biotechnology Lab as a technical lead and project manager. The team worked on developing off-grid autonomous wastewater treatment systems as sanitation solutions for low- and middle-income countries. Her research interests include nutrient recovery and management, bio-electrochemical systems, electrochemical processes, water reuse, and sustainable sanitation.
Prior to joining USF, she worked primarily on fundamental understanding of energy-efficient wastewater treatment processes such as oxygenic photogranules and microbial fuel cells (MFC). She also developed a composting latrine retrofitted with MFC technology to turn wastewater into electricity for a local school in Ghana.
As a student, she was actively involved in organizations such as the Women in Engineering Program and Equal Opportunity in Engineering at the UT Austin, as well as the Graduate Women in STEM (GWIS) and the Diversity Program Office at UMass Amherst that promoted gender, racial, and ethnic representation in engineering.